Business elite hopes for a New Orleans future without the poor

Times Online ^ | 9/9/05 | Giles Whittell

[Crackingham]

Could the new New Orleans be a place of low poverty, low crime, good schools and minimal racial tension? Some affluent exiles, all white, hope so. In a private meeting in Dallas yesterday they urged the mayor, Ray Nagin, to embrace a controversial vision that could transform the city from a Democratic stronghold into a Republican one.

New Orleans will be rebuilt with up to $200 billion (£1.09 billion) in federal aid. It will have to be safer, and on higher ground. But if the business leaders have their way, it will be different in one key respect: fewer poor people.

It would be rebuilt “in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically,” James Reiss, an electronics magnate, told The Wall Street Journal. “The way we’ve been living is not going to happen again.”

As the great pump-out continues, the great rethink has begun. Everyone agrees that Hurricane Katrina is an opportunity as well as a disaster, but few have had the nerve to suggest that the mass exodus of the city’s overwhelmingly black poor may be part of that opportunity. One plan calls for an “Afro-Caribbean Paris” to emerge, with broad new boulevards, electric trolleybuses and a riverfront park. Another sees it as a new Las Vegas.

Most of the 100,000 residents who lived on or near the poverty line, have been removed. Thousands have found jobs and homes elsewhere. Some will never return, and this historic shift is being built into projections for the future.

“About half the dispersed population is likely never to come back,” Mary Comerio of the University of California at Berkeley said. “It will change the character of New Orleans.”

[america-rules]

This writer is a crack head. New Orleans isn't getting 200 Billion in aid they're getting a small portion of it.

[GSlob]

Well, one thing he got straight: New and Improved Orleans is to be rebuilt on higher ground [or not rebuilt at all].

[flashbunny]

ah, it's from europe, where the journalists apparently smoke a stronger brand of crack than they do in the US.

[martin_fierro]

From Giles Whittell in Washington

Something tells me ol' Giles doesn't personally reside in NE Washington D.C.

[cynwoody]

This writer is a crack head. New Orleans isn't getting 200 Billion in aid they're getting a small portion of it.

The writer is innumerate ($200 billion != £1.09 billion), but the question is nevertheless a good one. How will the rebuilt New Orleans turn out? Did Katrina just vacuum out a huge Democrat voting block and disolve it into the surrounding states, just as the flood pollution is being dissipated in the Gulf?

[pollyannaish]

I don't want Republican cities....I want Republican voters. Big difference.

[martin_fierro]

Yup. Giles is on the pipe:

 

November 19 1998	FEATURES

American Vogue has put the official stamp on massive grassroots support for Hillary Clinton. Giles Whittell reports

"The evolution of Hillary Clinton as stylish First Lady is complete - at long last she seems to have settled comfortably and unapologetically into a style that suits her" 
Photograph: JIM BOURG/REUTERS

The sexiest woman alive?

Next week Hillary Clinton will realise the dream of thousands of twentysomething models by appearing on the cover of American Vogue. Not bad for a once-bespectacled feminist who recently turned 51. But it comes not a moment too soon; to judge by a swelling chorus of Hillarymania, her new role as cover girl is merely belated proof of her transformation - no snorting- into one of the most revered and glamorous First Ladies ever.

She is dressed for American Vogue by Oscar de la Renta, and coiffed and made up by an army of beauticians. She is photographed by Annie Leibovitz, and appears as she may even be in reality; attractive, independent and amazingly immune to the stigma that will attach to her husband for the rest of his public life.

A trawl through cyberspace confirms that when it comes to Hillary and the American public, Vogue is just catching up.Alan Baird, for instance, thinks she is the sexiest woman alive. She is intelligent, powerful, famous and good-looking, he says (at least, "she ain't chopped liver"), and all these things are sexy. His conclusion: "Hillary's my dream girl."

Joe "D" is more poetic. Hillary "has matured as a First Lady better than a fine wine in both her demeanour, and, in my opinion, her looks," he says. To make the point he loads on to his website a memory-eating slide show of Mrs C in dozens of guises, from Arkansas librarian to Sharon Stone lookalike in dark evening gown, gold earrings and upswept hair. The montage is entitled "Mighty Morphin Hillary".

You can find anything on the Internet, of course, but given its popularity with misogynists and conspiracy theorists from the far Right, her rave reviews here are remarkable. >> And nowhere are they more gushing than in the Hillary Clinton Forum, which bleeds on to your screen very slowly because it is so vast. Gradually, under a gently waving American flag, its idol appears, beaming regally into thousands of homes and offices (mine was the 36,902nd). Her red jacket matches lips that frame film-star teeth. A black turtleneck offsets her neat blonde bob. It's all very flattering - and is aimed, ultimately, at putting Hillary in the Oval Office.

There are many similar websites: the Hillary 2000 Committee, the Hillary for President Council, even Republicans for Hillary. All will be disappointed in the end, because she is unlikely ever to be President. But in the meantime they are cheering on her arrival as a fashion icon with the excitement of punters watching their horse make a late run from behind.

For this Mrs Clinton has to thank, partly, a national surge of admiration for her fortitude during Lewinskygate. She has also had good fashion advice lately, good enough for The Washington Post to declare on Monday that "the evolution of Mrs Clinton as stylish First Lady is complete

 . . . It has taken six years of evolving hairstyles, a flying-saucer hat and countless unflattering suits, but at long last she seems to have settled comfortably and unapologetically into a style that suits her". 

>> But as much as to either of these, she is indebted to a feisty Californian grandmother whom she once met without realising who she was.

Esme Taylor, 64, is the queen of the Hillary underground. It was she who founded the Hillary Clinton Forum in 1995, and it is she who now runs it as a rowdy, often profane, free-for-all that she insists Hillary would "get a kick out of" if only she knew where to find it. (Mrs Clinton has yet to master e-mail, say White House insiders.)

Taylor's office on the north side of San Francisco Bay is ground zero for the new paranoid Left that has emerged in response to the Starr report's alleged excesses. "This forum has been designed to protect your messages from Kenneth Starr," her home page states. But it has the good sense to accept contributions from anyone, including "Zippy the Wonder Slug", a diehard Hillary-phobe who once joined in the attacks on the First Lady's "piano legs", but reversed his position on seeing the photograph of her dancing on a beach with the President last year. "You know what?" Zippy mused. "She has a lovely ass."

Taylor was born in South Africa to English parents. She moved to America in 1961 and late in life set up an Internet business with the help of computer boffins in Siberia who use Russian military satellites to beam over new software to handle her booming traffic.

She has monitored all of Mrs Clinton's makeovers. "In Arkansas she wore her hair longish, with a thick Alice band to keep it out of her face," she says. "But when she got to Washington they couldn't deal with it like that."

Hence her first bob, by Christophe, which grew out into a Jennifer Aniston-style face-framer, but by the time of her husband's re-election campaign was too long by half: "In 1995, when we first brought her on to the site, she was looking a bit Arkansas again."

A second overhaul followed in 1996, but it took the private hell of this year - and a reported blitz in the gym - for her to find public acceptance at last. "Before Lewinsky the country saw her as powerful and pushy, and Americans still like their women weak and wimpy," Taylor avers. "Now she's the one who's risen above it all, who is being presidential."

Taylor knows whereof she speaks. A group of trial lawyers who share her building in the seaside town of Sausalito arranged for her to attend a recent Democratic fundraiser at which Hillary spoke on behalf of her friend Senator Barbara Boxer. "I was the guest of honour," Taylor says. She shook the First Lady's hand and was thanked by her, even though Mrs Clinton is on record as saying she thinks the Internet should be patrolled for smut and other naughtiness.

Such censoriousness doesn't seem to bother Taylor or her cohorts of Hillary addicts. For them, after years in the wilderness, Mrs Clinton has come into her own as the antithesis of the pasty-faced Kenneth Starr. Which is to say, as the sexiest woman alive.

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[California Patriot]

Can't say I blame them.

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

Well, this would explain why Mayor Nagin is so hot to get the remaining residents moved out. The quicker New Orleans is depopulated, the quicker the city can condemn all that property via eminent domain, then sell it off to developers at a tidy profit to the city. With more than a few under-the-table payments made to the appropriate city officials, I'm sure....

[txhurl]

Business elite hopes for inherits from Katrina a New Orleans future without the poor

There, that's mo' betta.

[claptrap]

Businessmen love the poor especially the undocumented poor
who will do the jobs documented poor wont or refuse to do.
The whole idea put forth is perposterus, secondly eminent
domain is aimed squarely at the middle and upper middle class oh and slum lords who forgot to pay their monthly bribes to the appropriate city officals.

[rineaux]

It will change the character of New Orleans.”

for the better. but the political culture must change too.

[MitchellC]

but few have had the nerve to suggest that the mass exodus of the city’s overwhelmingly black poor may be part of that opportunity.

If it hasn't been seriously suggested, then why imply it has been?

[lndrvr1972]

I guess they havent seen her cankles. I have seen them in person

[rineaux]

at second thought, they may offer hugh incentives to get the voting populous back in.

[JLS]

This writer is a crack head. New Orleans isn't getting 200 Billion in aid they're getting a small portion of it.
__________________________________________

In addition while I don't know exactly todays dollar/sterling rate, I am pretty sure it is not the almost $200/pound sterling exchange rate implied by his figures.

[rogue yam]

The writer is innumerate ($200 billion != £1.09 billion)

I think maybe the Limeys use a different system for naming large numbers than we do, but I'm unclear on the details.

[WoofDog123]

heck anyone who isn't part of a political machine running such a city would see the unique situation here and start trying to figure out how to keep said people out.

Or tell me homeowners and others who have economic influence WANT the superdome refugees back?

[Peach]

This is a shocking article and goes a long way to explain why the Red Cross and Salvation Army were blocked from delivering food and water to people in the shelters on Tuesday.